The days are over when Cirque shows have been operated as insular productions, independent of one another. The company is reorganizing — and downsizing — its management operations for its five residency productions on the Las Vegas Strip that are in partnership with MGM Resorts International (“Mystere” at Treasure Island being the exception). Cirque also has a show coming into Luxor to be announced this spring.
2 comments:
It is always sad to see big companies like MGM and Cirque du Soleil having to let long time employees go due to budget cuts. I am sure many of the department heads being let go have been with Cirque for over ten years, so I can only imagine how hard it is for many of these people to leave. I think the new structure of having crew heads oversee more than one production is a very interesting one. With shows as large as they are, I can picture how busy the crew heads already are just having to deal with one show. For example, on Cirque's show KÁ, at the MGM Grand, has the largest rigging staff out of any other show in North America. With this many people, the head of rigging for KÁ has a lot of people and a lot of tasks to juggle. Part of me wonders if they will start to have issues with burn out after this structural change.
It is a really sad thing to hear that people have lost their jobs because of things fully out of their control. Downsizing the residency productions in Vegas that are in partnership with MGM must have been a difficult decision to come to because that is a massive group of people that must have been effected. The decision that each Cirque show will not have a head of each department, but that multiple productions will be under a single person’s purview is an interesting decision. I fully understand how that decision could have come to fruition, and I am sure it was well thought through, but I wonder if having one person overseeing several complex and intricate operations could result in things falling through the cracks. Not having people consistently on site being another pair of eyes feels like it could go wrong quickly, especially because everyone is used to a person always being there and being present to do that. I think that it is good of MGM to be so engaged with helping their employees find new work quickly, but I hope the effects of this decision do not do too much harm.
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